Lampang & Creative Access Country

We apologize for posting this up so late but it has been busy since we've got back and we are all getting back into our rhythm of a normal schedule.  

Our trip to Lampang province and then to a “Creative Access Country” was a trip that we’ll never forget. We’ve all been impacted by it and we pray that you will too as you read this blog post.

The 3 hr trip to Lampang was great. There were a lot more temples and a lot fewer Christians there. The city had a darker atmosphere.

We made our first stop at a prison, where we were searched and was only allowed to bring in our bibles and passports. As we walked in, you can instantly feel the brokenness and hopelessness that covered the room. There were about 100 men in the room, some stood outside and listened.

Ellie shared a special song that The Lord gave her about us being God’s inheritance. Then Darius and Amy shared their testimonies on why they follow Jesus, about the love and freedom in Jesus. How God’s plans are good and not of evil, to give us a hope and a future. (Jer 29:11) After the gospel was preached, 20-30 prisoners raised their hands and said they wanted to follow Jesus. Although, this story might be considered a norm in prison ministries we believe with all of our hearts that those brothers were marked in some way that we can’t even fathom and was forever changed by the love of God. Please continue to pray for them, that they will continue to follow Jesus all the days of their lives and may God raise them up as mighty men of valor and lovers of Jesus.

We then went to a nearby village to pass out packages and do home-to-home evangelism. We saw people get healed as we laid hands on them. One group asked a woman if they could pray for her and she responded, I’ve heard about Jesus before when I was younger in a Christian school. “How do I get rid of my sin?” She had continued with her Buddhist practices but still felt tormented in her soul and full of sin. Even Wiwat, a seasoned church planter in Thailand, was shocked at how God had prepared her. They shared the Gospel with her and she gave her life to Jesus that day. Our team also got to pray over her son Winning. We prophesied that he will one day win souls for Jesus as a world shaker and history maker. Praise God!

We stayed the weekend in Lampang at a church for a prayer conference with Every Home for Christ. The ACTS team did special songs, shared testimonies and led morning prayer meetings. But get this, although our prayer meetings seemed so weak, God saw it in a different light. Many Pastors from the nearby churches would poke their heads in to join us later on told us that they were deeply impacted by our meetings and would like us to do prayer seminars at their churches. God opened up doors for us that no man can shut.

  

A highlight of that weekend was when God changed our schedule as Abi shared her testimony on being filled with The Holy Spirit. We then prayed for the children to filled with The Holy Spirit and then the adults asked if we could pray for them as well!

After Lampang we made the long, bumpy (some got car sick) yet gorgeous mountainous trek to the “creative access country.” It is a small communist nation that is in the top 10 list of persecuted nations. Our purpose there was to pray for the nation and prayer walk key locations. We also prayed and trusted the Lord for divine appointments.

Because it is illegal to share the gospel in this nation and for the safety of the underground church leaders, we did not share the gospel. Instead, we prayer walked around government buildings and temples, lifting high the name of Jesus. The Lord promised Brian that like in Joshua’s day, He would give the ACTS school every place our feet touch. As His ambassadors, wherever our feet touched, we are claiming land for Him. Truly, the feet of those who bring good news are beautiful for He has anointed them for us both for evangelism and prayer.

In less than 3 days, our hearts have been knitted to this nation as we waited on The Lord for His heart for this land that He loved so much. The Holy Spirit came upon us and we found ourselves in a hotel room weeping in intercession, crying out for souls, for God’s persecuted saints and for laborers to be raised up.

“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Matt 5:10. God opened up a door for us to meet these blessed ones from a college ministry and to have fellowship with them. The faith of these students have provoked us all as we listened to their stories of how they came to know Jesus and how they’ve all been persecuted in some way for their faith.

They have given up so much to follow Jesus. Some have been disowned by their parents and few have served prison sentences for sharing the Gospel. Yet they run all the harder and love Jesus all the better. Please continue to pray for these Daniels to be able to stand for Jesus in the midst of a dark nation and for the Gospel to run swiftly throughout that nation. He is worthy of the reward of His suffering. May Jesus have His inheritance. (Psalm 2)

Week Review

Before I recap this past week, I'd like to begin by saying that today we saw four unbelievers give their lives to Christ. This afternoon from 3:45-6:00pm, Nathalie, Zoe, Cory, Victoria, Jimmy (local believer; worship pastor), Zack (local believer; Christian radio host), and myself dispersed throughout our little part in Kitale for the purpose of evangelism. Immediately the first two people we talked to surrendered their lives to Christ and were filled with the Holy Spirit! You can imagine how encouraging that was! I thought, surely everybody that we were going to talk to today was going to get saved. We talked to a total of 18 people; 10 of whom were Spirit-filled believers; and four of the eight unbelievers committed their lives to Christ and are being connected to local churches for further discipleship. So amazing!

Now I'll go back in time to quickly review the week.

On Tuesday our team, along with 15+ local believers (some were church pastors) went to the first gate of the city of Kitale to pray and prophesy over Kitale. We declared Psalm 24:7-10 over the gate of the city - that the King of Glory is exalted and welcomed in Kitale, and that every argument, sin, and false religion that exalts itself above Jesus would leave in Jesus' name. It was a powerful time of intercession that was only supposed to go for 15 minutes, but lasted for one hour.

On Saturday, Nathalie, myself and the team taught and modeled the Harp and Bowl prayer model to around 50 worship leaders and pastors. We also had a handful of the worship leaders and singers try it for themselves, and they had a blast. The teaching was very clear; Nathalie is an incredible teacher, oh my word. She did an amazing job. Then on Sunday we condensed the teaching to only 10 minutes and led a local church into intercession using the Harp and Bowl Model. The entire congregation was engaged as we prayed out of Romans 15, for God to unify the Church in Kitale, and Colossians 1, for worship leaders and intercessors to arise in Kitale. The Senior Pastor of the church that we ministered at (and he also hosted the Saturday teaching time) absolutely loves the Harp and Bowl Model and said that what we are doing will revolutionize Kitale, and that he wants to continue doing what we have taught even after we leave Kenya. How awesome is that! A worship-based prayer culture is being established in Kitale!

On Mondays and Thursdays we have decided to teach afternoon classes/clinics for those who are interested in getting trained in our prayer model and plugged in to the prayer room schedule. So on Monday we had six people come to the class form 2:30-5pm. Nathalie, Shannon, Cory, and I coached them on how to sing and pray the Bible phrase by phrase; at IHOP we call this Worship With the Word. We all sat in a circle together and one after the other sang/prayed Psalm 23 and part of Psalm 16 phrase by phrase. This was such a fruitful time of teaching. The six "students" quickly understood the concept and were able to do it with us.

Then this afternoon at 1pm, after our prayer room sets, Shannon and I went to a local church to minister for one hour. I preached from Matthew 9:36-38 - compassion for the lost, prayers for the harvest, and God making us the answer to our prayers.

I think that's all for this past week.

A week in Turkana

Wow. What a week. On Monday the 10th, our ACTS team hopped on a bus for a 12-hour journey North, Turkana. On the bus Cory Wasson preached to 50+ Kenyans out of the story of Mary of Bethany. After he preached, I followed up with a ministry time, where I prayed for 10-15 people who raised their hands saying that they want to give all of their time, money, energy and relationships to Jesus. I have no idea who I prayed for that was already a born again Christian or who was not. I wish I would have been more intentional to figure out what kind of people were responding; but nevertheless, it's really awesome that people responded to Jesus. 10-15 people said that they wanted love Jesus with all of their heart, soul, mind and strength. Amen! After I preached, Cory played guitar as Eunice Njeri led the bus into worship.

At 11pm, we arrived in Kakuma - a simple Turkana town surrounded by the desert mountains. We slept that night, and every night, outside in the cool air and vigorous wind, underneath the most spectacular moon and stars I have ever seen. I got to see my first and second shooting star ever! I don't know how I have gone through 22 years of life without seeing one, but finally I have seen one. It was sweet:) In the morning, we were usually awakened to the sound of SHOUTING goats who roamed freely among us in our little compound:)

We arrived in Kakuma not knowing at all how we were expected to minister. But we agreed that regardless of how we ministered, God's primary assignment for us there was intercession to withstand the increasing influence of immorality and idolatry (Islam) through intercession.

Our basic ministry schedule looked like two services every day - one morning and one evening service. The service would begin with worship, followed by a sermon on prayer, and we'd finish with a time of intercession or prophetic worship.

In our Thursday morning service, Tyler Andrews preached and led us into a time of prayer for God to establish a culture of prayer in the town. During this time of prayer the Lord released upon us a spirit of conviction through a word of wisdom given to Cory Wasson. We responded to the Lord with a time of open repentance and confession of sin from the church pulpit. This was the turning point for our trip. Previously we really were sensing a "blockage" in the effectiveness of our teaching and praying, and even in our team's internal relationships. But after this open confession and repentance of sin we saw a breakthrough in the response of the congregation we were ministering to, God began to answer the prayers that we offered up even before we left for Kenya, and the team felt a new brotherly love for each other. This was so cool. God changed our team and He changed those who we ministered to because we confessed our sins to one another.

On Friday afternoon the team spent some time sharing dreams that God had given us for the whole team. God is clearly speaking to us through dreams right now. Each dream explained and confirmed the other. There are far too many details to share about the dreams and what God is speaking to us in this update. But I just wanted to testify to God's good leadership, that He is clearly making known the direction that we should go, and the things that we need to intercede for. Thank you Jesus for speaking to our team so obviously!

After sharing our dreams, we spent an hour in intercession for the immorality and idolatry in Kakuma. We prayed that God would release purity in the Church, and that He would take every Muslim out of the domain of darkness and transfer him into the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, and turn every mosque that stands at the gates of the city into a church. We felt a breakthrough in intercession during that time.

So on Friday evening instead of preaching the AWESOME sermon that I had prepared, I sensed God wanting me to preach from James 5:16 and lead the congregation again in a time of open confession of sin (there were more people in the evening services who weren't there for the Thursday morning confession). The message connected in the congregation, the Holy Spirit was present, releasing grace for confession, and after a word of exhortation from Cory (who carried the grace to lead people into repentance), the whole congregation responded by coming to the altar to repent for and openly confess their sin.

On Saturday, upon our request, Pastor Wilson (one of the main pastors in Turkana, and our host), took us on a climb to the top of one of the largest mountains in the area, for have a time of intercession, blessing and prophecy for the town of Kakuma and nation of Kenya. I felt God's presence on top of the mountain, and knew that He would answer out prayers. And I believe that our repentance on Thursday is the reason why the prayers on the mountain will be answered. James 5:16 says "Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective [or fervent] prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much." Because we had confessed, because we had come into right standing before God, our prayers surely will accomplish much.

On Sunday, before I preached the second service, Tyler Andrews' "man purse" where he keeps his wallet containing his ID, credit card, copy of passport and visa, and both personal and team money was stolen by a little boy. Pastor Wilson and a couple others prayed that it would return before we left to go back home to Kitale in the afternoon. The "man purse" was found only a short while later. But this is the cool part - while second service worship was still going, a man who lives a few kilometers away stumbles upon Tyler's wallet, sees that there is a white guy's ID card in it, and decides to call Pastor Wilson to see if perhaps he has any foreign guests in town who may of lost their wallet. The wallet was returned with everything in it except for the cash. Praise God! He answers prayer!

Okay, so back to the church service. I got to preach the AWESOME sermon that I told you about. I preached on responding to the imminent day of Christ's return through intercession. The passages I preached from were Luke 2 (Anna), Matthew 24, and Luke 21. I really enjoyed preaching this sermon hahaha:) About 20 in a congregation of 100 or so came to the altar to receive prayer for grace as they commit themselves to live lifestyles of intercession and fasting like Anna the daughter of Phanuel in Luke 2. God answered a prayer of mine from Thursday morning in this sermon. On Thursday morning, as we were praying for God to set watchmen on the wall of intercession in Kakuma, I felt like God told me to pray for this specific family that we had the opportunity to meet earlier in the week. I felt like He told me to pray for the children of this family, that they would be intercessors like Anna; that they would give the best of their vitality to intercession and fasting, night and day, for the rest of their lives. One of the teenage girls of this family that I was praying for, came to the altar for prayer after my sermon; later with tears in her eyes she told one of the ladies' on our team, Carly Cerak, that she wanted to be like Anna. What a God we serve who answers prayer! He told me what to pray on Thursday; I actually prayed; and then on Sunday He answered that prayer. I love how God works!

Oh ya I almost forgot. That before I preached, God told me that there was somebody in the room who wasn't born again, but I wasn't sure if He was telling me to give a salvation call or not. No matter, after ministry time, Pastor Wilson gave an invitation for anybody who wanted to be born again to come forward. One of the town drunkards who had disrupted one of our team meetings came forward to give His life to Jesus. He knelt down, and prayed; then Pastor Wilson prayed for Him to receive the Holy Spirit. As he was going back to His seat, he was wiping tears off of his face. This man was not just praying a prayer, he was not drunk, but he genuinely repented and gave his life to Christ. Hahahaha! Yes!

There are even more testimonies from this week than I am not sharing. I hope that none of my team members read this update, because they'd certainly yell at me for leaving stuff out. All this is to say that God is working through us. We have been sent by God to Kenya on purpose.

Photos from Uganda

Upon arriving in Tororo we found our photo on the flyer promoting the House of Prayer Conference literally all over town.

This was a picture from one of the night crusades in Bukedea.  The gospel went forth with power in this region and around 65 people received Jesus as their lord!

A Week In Pokot

This is Truman here.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, last Monday, Peter and I headed off with the 1st year "Youth Ablaze" students (Uganda) to a small town named Lomut in the region of Pokot, Kenya for a week long outreach. We took two days traveling, spending the night at the home of a pastor who recently planted a church in Lomut. 

Arriving in Lomut, we found that although they were a tribal people and many were unreached, they generally wore normal clothes and drank Coca-cola. : ) The town is planted in a valley with a river running through it surrounded by beautiful and towering mountains. Nestled in the mountains were crops of maize, mango trees, and huts dotting the hillside. Many of the people wore traditional Pokot attire which was brightly colored.

I honestly believe the grace of the Lord was upon us through your prayers. There was a wide open door for the Word of Christ to go forth in this town and in the hill country surrounding it. It felt as though we literally stepped into a ripe harvest field.

Our time consisted of door to door evangelism in the mornings, a loudspeaker marketplace crusade in the afternoons, and a revival service in the evenings. The last evening we showed the Jesus film in the Pokot language. I thought it was amazing to see the Pokot people excitedly watch the story of Jesus in their own tongue.

The most impacting part of this trip for me was the door to door evangelism. We split up into about four teams and went out to find lost people. The first morning each team led at least 10 people to the Lord. Nearly everyone we talked to were eager to accept the message of Jesus and most of them had never been to a church. 

The next day we desired to go further up into the hills that surrounded Lomut and reach those who may have never heard of Jesus. Peter and I joined up with one of the Youth Ablaze leaders, Rev. Paul, and a few of the Youth Ablaze students and headed out for the hills on boda-boda taxis (motorcycles). As we arrived at the point too rocky for the bikes, amazingly, one of our boda-boda drivers asked if he could hike with us into the hills and hear more about Jesus. We took him with us and preached the word to him and he accepted the message, confessed, repented and believed in Jesus. 

We hiked for over an hour and found huts but no people (at work somewhere). Continuing on, we found a gathering of about 11 men in the woods resting from their morning work. Rev. Paul preached the gospel to them and all of them accepted the message and made prayers of confession and repentance. We told them about baptism and then went down to the nearby river and baptized over half of them, including the boda-boda driver. I personally got to baptize three of them after asking them to count the cost. "Will you endure for the sake of Christ? Will you die with Him that you may be live and reign with Him at His return?" (2 Tim. 2:11-13). This aquatic picture of being buried with Christ is such a witness to the day when our dead bodies will rise in glory conformed to the body of His glory.

After this we asked, "What do we do next?" This was a significant moment for me. Here we led 11 men to the Lord, but that was the easy part. What do we leave these men with? For all we knew, there was no church in any close proximity to where these men lived. They wanted one of us to stay back and be their pastor. They even had a plot of land where we could build a church. Umm… pause. What do we do? How do we ground these believers in the faith? We didn't have the answers and had to go, but these questions pounded at me. At that moment, I committed my life to seek the answer to this simple question, "What does it mean to make disciples?" 

The next day Rev. Paul went back to the hills with some other students and a local pastor to plant a church for these men and the many others we led to the Lord the day before. Peter and I went to the flatlands and preached with the rest of the students there. During the entire trip, we led over 200 people to the Lord (nearly all were during the door to door outreaches). 

On our way back to Uganda, we stopped in Kitale, Kenya and visited the Kenya ACTS team who are here. Peter and I decided to be dropped off and spend the day with our ACTS friends as the rest of our Uganda caravan continued back to Uganda. We are currently spending the day with the Kenya ACTS team before Peter and I jump on a bus for Uganda tomorrow.

We praise God for all that He is doing in Pokot. We want to see worship arise from all over the region and burning lamps set on lamp-stands, giving light to all men (Mt. 5:14-16, 1 Thess. 1:8-10).

Week to 2 in the Pearl of Africa

It is almost the end of week two in Uganda and the Lord has been teaching us so much.

We have been surprised to find that Uganda already has a strong praying church (we love their fervency in prayer), but the Lord is using this fact strategically in raising up a day and night house of prayer in this place. Additionally, Uganda’s geographical position next to several needy nations (most of them Muslim) makes missions potential enormous. Partnering with Jesse and Rachelle’s vision has been awesome!

The team has been fully embracing the adventure of Ugandan life: the girls wearing long skirts every day, using the squatty potty instead of a toilet, eating rice and beans, the power going off almost every evening …. the Lord has been teaching us to live simply as well as having a thankful heart at all times and valuing relationship more than time.

The joy we see in the Ugandans has especially gripped our hearts. There is almost no worship song where the Ugandans do not sing loudly and passionately, clapping their hands and dancing. It is very contagious!

First Outreach to Bukedia

For our first weekend in Uganda, the team split in two. Some of us went to Bukedia for outreach and others stayed at the house of prayer doing hours of prayer and worship as well as visiting an orphanage.

Carly, Casey, Linda, Kate, Nichole and I (Belen) went to Bukedia. We were engaged in preaching at local churches and the prison, hut to hut evangelism and sharing the gospel with Muslims at a crusade. By the end of the weekend, we had visited 7 local churches, 1 prison and 40 huts. 65 people were saved and connected to local churches for follow up. Praise God!

Some highlights we will not forget:

-       The joy and loud cheers of the local people and especially the children, every time they received us.

-       The respect given to elders in this culture is evident. Women and children kneel to say hello as a show of respect.

-       Showering while standing on a rock surrounded by grass walls and sticks, open to the African sky.

-          Sleeping in mud huts on thin mattresses.

-          Receiving gifts from our hosts: g-nuts and a chicken.

-          Men holding hands as a demonstration of love and friendship.

Interesting facts:

-          Carly preached the gospel to three Muslims and then baptized them in water during hut to hut evangelism.

-          A lizard crawled on Kate, Linda and Belen’s arms and legs, waking them up in the middle of the night.

-          John Thurlow is already famous in Africa as we sang “Strong Love” during the crusade (they loved it).

-          We all preached a sermon and/or shared our testimony at the local churches or the crusade.

Trip to Lampang Prison & Creative Access Country

Sawat di ka.

 The Thailand team is leaving for two trips this weekend and next week. We're leaving for Lampang province tomorrow to visit a prison of 1000 people. Our team will be ministering to 300 people. We're staying for one night in Lampang and then we'll be heading to "A Creative Access Country" in South East Asia to prayer walk key locations and visit youth groups and churches.  Please lift us up in prayer. Will update you all when we return! 

Pra Chao Rephon- God bless you!